Backporch

Greg Valliere
"His allies have been ginning up support, making it clear that he's interested-and that's the kiss of death. If you want a major job in this town, you have to be coy."

Chief political strategist at Potomac Research Group, on Larry Summers' lobbying to become the next Federal Reserve chairman

Jacob Lew
"If we get to the end of this year and we cannot, with an honest, straight face, say that we have ended 'too big to fail,' we are going to have to look at other options."

Treasury Secretary, saying that regulatory work to implement the Dodd-Frank Act is close to done

Richard Parsons
"We don't want to be blamed the next time one of these things blows up so let's just throw the kitchen sink at them."

Former chairman of Citigroup, speculating on the mindset of legislators and regulators as it pertains to the biggest U.S. banks

Christina Romer
"Are we moving forward? It's hard to see it."

Former chairman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, on the lack of women involved in economic policy

Richard Leon
"In short, the board's interpretation is utterly indefensible."

U.S. District Judge, in a harshly worded ruling that said the Federal Reserve Board exceeded its authority under the Durbin Amendment in setting the cap on debit card transaction fees as high as it did

Chris Marinac
"It's like a Nascar driver sitting in a 35 mile- per-hour zone."

Analyst for FIG Partners, on how the slow economy is thwarting PacWest's desire to boost lending and is likely the impetus for its deal to buy the commercial lender CapitalSource

Sen. Sherrod Brown
"What do we want our banks to do? Make small business loans or refine and transport oil? Issue mortgages or corner the metals market?

Ohio Democrat, at a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing that looked at whether banks should own commodities operations, after Goldman Sachs allegedly manipulated aluminum prices

Chris Reynolds
"I probably would have paid down the national debt."

PayPal customer, whose June e-mail statement listed his account balance as a whopping $92,233,720,368,547,800, on what he would have done if he really had been a quadrillionaire

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